


A Fool's Paradise

by myriddin



Series: Fools [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Age Difference, Angst, Dysfunctional Family, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/M, Manipulation, May/December Relationship, Not a Happy Situation, Rhaegar is delusional, Self-Denial, and manipulative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-26
Updated: 2016-07-07
Packaged: 2018-06-04 14:13:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6661777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myriddin/pseuds/myriddin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set in a universe where Rhaegar didn’t run far with Lyanna, and negotiated with Lord Stark in exchange for Rhaegar calling a Great Council and taking Aerys off the throne. Lyanna still died birthing a son, and Rhaegar is still determined to get his Visenya by a Stark bride. No one involved is particularly happy with the outcome.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Not a happy romance because I’m incapable of writing this (and Rhaegar in general) in that fashion.

“I’m trying very hard not to see all this as a metaphor for my life.”

Rhaegar sighed as the dejected words left his young bride, studying her figure as she stood with her back facing him. Before her was a table covered in shattered glass and the ruined remains of a meal, the unfortunate victims of his brother and son’s tempers. 

“Viserys and Jon coming to blows isn’t any fault of yours, sweetling. They’ve had problems between them long before you and I became man and wife.”

“But I’m the current problem between them. Even you cannot deny that, my king.” Despite himself, Rhaegar had to admit part of what she spoke was truth. 

None of his children had reacted well to his third marriage. Aegon and Rhaenys had retreated in stony silence to Dragonstone, Daeron and Jaehaerys (the twins Elia had brought into the world at a fatal cost) wrote less and less often from Casterly Rock and Highgarden, but it was Jon who protested loudly and often, channeling the outrage of the maternal relatives he was so close to. And Viserys…Viserys had never outgrown his big brother worship. He thought Jon ungrateful and disloyal, and never failed to voice those feelings. 

He stepped forward to rest his hands against the swell in Sansa’s middle. Tension in the realm was mounting: Stark, Tully, Arryn, Baratheon, how was he supposed to keep the peace if he couldn’t keep his own house in order? He needed to take back the reins, with an iron hand if he had to. He couldn’t afford for his queen to be too upset, not when she carried such precious cargo. The Visenya he’d sacrificed so much for. “I’ll make this right. I promise.”

He caught a glimpse of her wan smile before she turned her head back around to look at the table. “If you say it, I believe it, Your Grace.”

If he chose to ignore the blatant lie to her words, it was something he chose not to give it much thought. All marriages had their compromises, after all.


	2. Chapter 2

He waits impatiently for her to come of age. He learned his lesson with Lyanna: a flowered girl hadn’t necessarily matured enough to survive the birthing bed. If Sansa gave him a son first as her aunt had, he needed her healthy and capable of conceiving again. He was certain the North would rebel if he took a third Stark daughter to wife. 

He grew impatient as the girl’s sixteenth birthday closed in. He had counted on Eddard’s protectiveness to ensure his oldest daughter stayed unmarried until now, but the Tyrell and Baratheon heirs were sniffing around too close for comfort. Add in that fostering a prince wasn’t enough anymore to keep the Lord of Highgarden from trying to shove his maiden daughter into Rhaegar’s bed, and Rhaegar knew it was time to act. The birth of Aegon and Rhaenys' son Baelys was plenty reason to call a Grand Tourney, and require all his Great Lords to attend. 

She was beautiful and bright, their daughter would be just the beacon in the darkness Aegon would need when the time came to fulfill his destiny. There was a sweetness to her that made going through the motions of the gallant, charming suitor more truth than act. Even at forty-three, he knew he was an attractive man. By the stars that filled her eyes when he kissed her hand, his lady knew it too. 

He couldn’t bed her right away; she wasn’t hot-blooded and reckless like Lyanna had been. No, romance was key, so it was romance he proposed- to steal away and elope. Once they were wed in the eyes of the Seven, nothing could tear them apart. 

As his Kingguard courteously helped Lady Sansa unto his horse, Rhaegar’s arm wrapped around her waist tight enough to be just short of stealing her breath. He wouldn’t be losing another Stark bride.


	3. Chapter 3

From first impression, Rhaegar Targaryen seemed to be everything Sansa had ever wanted.

Despite supposedly being passed his prime, Rhaegar was still an exquisitely handsome man, tall and beautiful in his black and crimson regalia from that first approach. He took her breath away when he swept into a bow and placed a lingering kiss on her hand, eyes of deep, enigmatic indigo locking with hers as the brush of his lips against her skin sent shivers down her spine.

Months later, she would regret how easily he convinced her to run away with him, sweeping her up onto his palfrey and holding her so tightly she could barely breathe, riding away toward Summerhall and the sept that waited there. They married there with three members of the Kingsguard as witnesses, and when Rhaegar swept a beautiful Targaryen cloak around her shoulders and bent down to kiss her sweetly, Sansa nearly swooned from the romance of it all.

They holidayed there at Summerhall for two months, Sansa blissfully unaware of the uproarious reaction that came from her family (immediate and extended) and the relations of Joffrey Baratheon, her unofficial betrothed. Sansa enthusiastically learned the pleasures of the marital bed and basked in being the center of Rhaegar’s attention.

_She delighted in his hair, the silvery color of starlight, soft and silken between her fingers as he let her card them through, expertly plaiting the smooth locks into the low braid he preferred. Most of all, she liked when he wore it loose and free as he leaned close to kiss her, and it fell around them like a curtain of liquid silver, making a little world for just them two._

The ignorance could not last, however, as Rhaegar was needed to attend to matters of the realm. Their arrival in the capitol left the first trace of tarnish on the golden dream of her happy ending, the overwhelming disapproval of the court and Rhaegar’s own family. She hadn’t considered the opinions of her husband’s five children in the excitement of their elopement, but she was faced with a grim reality when reactions varied from silence to enforced distance to outright rage.

Her pregnancy only seemed to make things worse. Rhaegar enforced a rule that the messages from her family must first be read by him lest they upset her, the tension between Jon, Rhaegar, and Viserys reached an explosive head until Jon (who had become a good friend and companion since her arrival in King’s Landing) left the city with haste, heading for Dragonstone the last Sansa had been informed.

Rhaegar’s attention shifted from her to the child she carried with almost alarming abruptness after she passed her sixth month, restricting her activities, her diet, and visitors, until the day she went to the birthing bed and she finally understood the depth of Rhaegar’s true indifference to her as anything but  Stark-blooded womb.

Her son came into the world strong and hearty, the fine downy hair feathering the top of his head holding a reddish tinge that brought a tired smile to Sansa’s face as the midwife settled the babe into her arms for the first time.

She looked up with beaming joy when her husband was admitted entrance to the room, joy that began to dim as she saw the stony, impassive expression on Rhaegar’s face. “Your Grace?”

“Fear not, my lady. The maester has told me you will need only two months to recover if the child is given to a wet nurse. We can begin again soon enough.”

The cursory look Rhaegar gave the child in her arms, the only emotion to be found there a vague sense of irritation, struck Sansa with a sudden chill. “Begin what, Your Grace?”

The fact that Rhaegar’s answering expression was so genuinely puzzled at her confusion was even more frightening. “Conceiving the third head of the dragon, of course. My Visenya.”

Her arms tightening around the babe nursing at her breast, Sansa wondered if she had ever truly known the man she married at all.


End file.
